


stairs

by Thomas_Fooll



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: M/M, Obsessive Behavior, Possible Memory Loss but idk what really happened, Psychological Trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-09
Updated: 2019-05-09
Packaged: 2020-02-29 03:46:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18770539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thomas_Fooll/pseuds/Thomas_Fooll
Summary: AU where Josh Dun comes to Tyler's porch every Friday at 6AM. Comes in, tells about staircases and devours jelly beans out of a crystal bowl on the kitchen table.





	stairs

**Author's Note:**

> This is a translation from Russian. You can read my original work at https://ficbook.net/readfic/6168477 if you will.  
> This work is kinda hard to read, I was told that several times so if you feel like it's not for you at any point throughout it - feel free to take a break or stop reading completely.  
> Also bear with me having troubles with not putting commas after every word as we often do in Russian, lol.

At some point Josh Dun starts using grapefruit and sagebrush-scented shower gel, spreading this bitter, luscious, citrusy and sunny aroma that irritates olfactory receptors. Then Josh Dun dyes his hair pink - just like this "Bubblegum" syrup - and paints his nails white - just like the snow that floated around the city last December. He writes drum solos, comes to Tyler's house and devours jelly beans out of a crystal bowl in the kitchen.

Josh Dun leans onto a counter, lets the water flow as the tiny trickle crushes upon touching the metal surface of a kitchen sink. Josh puts his fingers under the water and says, filling nearly the whole house with his low sonant voice: "I didn't particularly like staircases as a child".

Tyler opens a cabinet, pulling out a pack of microwave meal - it has this rubbery, artificial taste and texture, and is probably made out of something like cellulose, but he's not really bothered by that until it's edible and doesn't provoke sudden death. Not that Tyler would refuse if he was offered to die.

Tyler puts the breakfast into the microwave, it mesmerizes him, turning the plastic bowl with cellophane lid around, and he wonders why did Josh always say that he liked staircases. The microwave turns off, alarming him that the rubbery cellulose offal inside of it is sodden enough for him to eat; Josh Dun, not turning off the water, still pouring from the tap into the silvery trough of the kitchen sink, adds:

"Well, now it's not like that, obviously. Staircases are very special for me. While walking up or down them, people tend to cross their ways with one another, hitting each other's shoulders, and I believe it's absolutely amazing".

Every Friday morning Josh Dun comes to Tyler's place and watches as the boy eats his rubbery breakfast out of the plastic bowl. Eats jelly beans out of the crystal bowl on the kitchen table and, lately, spreads around bitter and luscious smell of chemical citruses, causing an allergic rash to cover Tyler's cheeks and his nose to clog up.

Every Friday morning Josh Dun tells Tyler about staircases like he's some clockwork dummy. He says: "I like counting the steps in the flights. If there's thirteen of them, the day is most likely to be bad. If there's more than fifteen, the day is most likely to be bad".

He says: "More than anything I like spiral staircases, just like the one in your Watchtower. If the angle that the steps are turning is too acute, the day is most likely to be bad. If it's too close to the right one, the day is most likely to be bad. If there's different angles between different steps, the day is most likely to be bad".

He says: "If you meet a person while making your way up or down, this is a sign of a bad day ahead. But if they hit you with their shoulder so that you lean onto the wall in order to balance yourself, that's not true".

Josh puts his rough, long and wide fingers under the trickle of water, throws up another jelly bean and catches it with his lips. Tyler slowly chews onto his rubbery breakfast.

When Josh Dun started tinting the waterlines of his slightly narrow eyes with the red lip pencil, Tyler accepted it and tried to understand what it meant. When Josh Dun told him that likes X-files rather than Donnie Darko, Tyler managed to come to terms with that. When Josh Dun suggested Tyler shaved his head, he did so. Now Josh Dun uses grapefruit and sagebrush-scented shower gel, paints his nails white and dyes his hair pink, and all of Tyler's senses are irritated simultaneously. He scratches his cheek, neck, the back of his palm, feeling the rash sores open up under his uncut splitting up nails; eats his rubbery breakfast with a cheap stainless steel spoon that are sold in Target seven pieces in a pack. If there's seven steps in a flight of the stairs, this means the day is most likely to be bad, but only if there's even number of them in the rest of the staircase.

Tyler posts flyers for a living. He blissfully sticks those pieces of paper onto fences and walls of the alleyways - ones about missing pets, flats and houses on sale, new fares for the Internet, the best fertilizers for your flowerbeds, marble chips for your driveway. One day after another, familiar routes, sticking one flyers over the other: the red ones over the blue ones, the green over the orange, the cyan over the mustardy-yellow. There's a pink flyer the colour of the "Bubblegum" syrup with black text and black-and-white photo: "Missing!" In the photo there's Josh Dun smiling at him with his teeth all visible, Tyler passionately covers a white "On sale" flyer, that he stuck here last week, with glue and sticks this one over it, Josh from the photo looks at him just like he does every Friday at 6AM, standing on his porch. The person on this flyer is called Richard Christopher Prenston, the person, devouring all of the jelly beans out of the crystal bowl on his kitchen table on his only day off - Joshua William Dun.

Every Friday morning Tyler gets up and stumbles barefoot to his front door, where, holding the bell button down, there's Josh/Rich Dun/Prenston, dancing a bit in the cold morning air. The boy enters his house with this frosty air, and spreads the smell of citruses and sagebrush, lighting the rooms up with his bubblegummy-syrupy hair, and talks about staircases. Tyler doesn't know whether Josh has a place of his own, or what he does for a living, or what he eats, but he knows every single opinion Josh has about stairs.

"A simple building usually has from seven to eleven steps in each flight, but in those modern art galleries or museums of natural history there can be even up to twenty-twenty-five", Josh says.

"If the steps are marble, they quickly become slippery and worn out, causing more accidents to happen. Death rate caused by falling off the stairs is reaching three point nine per cent, lethal accidents more often involve men in their fifties and older. Falling from the top steps may cause damage to occipital and temporal part of the skull", Josh says.

"More than thirty-five thousand people fall off the stairs every year, and that's only in the USA. In the UK this number reaches six thousand. Thirty thousand of such cases in Germany are lethal", says Josh.

Tyler chews his rubbery breakfast, it's dark outside, in the kitchen hood lamp light Josh's bubblegum-syrupy hair are even more blinding pink than in the sunlight. Tyler feels a subtle smell of cigarettes.

"More than thirty per cent of incidents involving staircases happen on the first step from the top, twenty-five - on the second, and twelve - on the third. Staircases of less than ten steps are considered the most dangerous ones: people tend to underestimate them and aren't being cautious. That's why staircases in the most houses are extremely dangerous", Josh says.

Tyler finishes his rubbery breakfast up, throws away the bowl. Next up is a short run to a local pharmacy: Josh follows him, and his breath is somewhere on the brink of inexistence. There's a bunch of balloons stuck on a light pole at a parking lot near Target, and the shrunk rubber of their surfaces is oddly reminiscent of colourful human skin. Tyler buys some antihistamines: Claritin, and Atarax, and also Zyrtec. Josh stares at the boxes while Tyler pushes them down his coat's pockets, and says: "First gen antihistamines may cause more side effects, including drowsiness, dizziness, nausea, mood swings, bladder problems, blurred sight, shorter attention span and lower reaction speed".

He says: "Taking first gen antihistamines before driving often causes falling asleep at the wheel, which statistically becomes the cause of a car crash in one case out of five. Chance of causing the crash is even higher for those drivers who suffer from increased fatigue and drowsiness, than for those who drive while drunk".

Josh Dun follows Tyler down the icy pavement, slipping all over the place in his thin fabric shoes. Tyler doesn't know if Josh has any warm clothes, but it's November, and he's still in his white tank-top with holes and shabby jeans with tears on the knees. Pink hair spread around them and down the street as a thin bubblegum-syrupy smoke.

"US Traffic Safety Administration claims that, according to the police reports, drowsiness causes hundred thousand car crashes yearly, of which seventy-six thousand involve people getting severely injured, and a thousand and a half are lethal, adding up to four per cent of the total number of the lethal accidents".

Next up: taking pills, telly noise in the background, message thread with Ryan Ross and Brendon Urie, Josh Dun in the kitchen puts the kettle to boil and takes a handful of jelly beans. Tyler goes upstairs, to his room, and listens to Josh Dun loudly counting the steps as he ascends: "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thir- Fuck! Why there's always the same amount!" - in his head Tyler answers, but stays silent. Josh Dun tumbles into his room, swinging the door open with his foot, and leaves dirty footprints all over the carpet, falls down on the bed beside him, leaving dirty marks on the blue sheets. Just think about it: even Atarax did not help a bit - Tyler's neck and chin are tingling, the sound of some White House dude speaking to the press from the telly downstairs spreads through the walls, filling the house, and so does the smell of grapefruit and sagebrush. Josh Dun says: "Glass staircases are righteously considered to be the most dangerous, not only due to the transparency of the surface of their steps, which does not provide enough visual information to sensibly evaluate the distance to the next step, but also because of the increased chance of slipping".

Josh Dun hands him the mug filled with chamomile tea, reads his messages. He says: "Ladders are not that interesting. They're too narrow for two people. However, that's ladders that cause the most incidents involving falling. How do you like my new hair colour?"

Tyler stares at the ceiling, drinks his chamomile tea. Josh's new hair colour - blinding him every time that he looks at it - reminds him of the times when he used to drink coffee with the "Bubblegum" syrup in college, cold winters in Chicago, gray houses and lake Michigan. Tyler Joseph posts flyers for a living, and according to that bright bubblegum-syrupy pink one, Josh Dun/Rich Prenston has someone, who cares about him.

Next up: staying silent and staring at the ceiling. Josh Dun lays down on the bed next to Tyler, pushes himself up with his feet in those dirty shoes. Tyler does his laundry every Saturday. Puts his blue sheets into the washing machine, along with the pillowcases and duvet covers. Pours in there some Arm&Hammer detergent (Target, ten dollars for two gallons). Then he is off to work, and when he comes back home - there's nothing left to remind him of Josh Dun's existence.

Josh Duns smells of his horrendous shower gel, "Bubblegum" syrup by Monin, as though his hair is actually tinted with it. When he tells Tyler about stairs - that's normal. When he tells Tyler about antihistamines - that's bearable. When he tells Tyler that his vision for the bedroom is the ceiling being painted dark with some fluorescent stars on it - Tyler does so. Now Josh Dun claims, that the word 'aeroplane' in Arabic is pronounced as 'ta-ira', and in Japanese that's the pronunciation of Tyler's name - and Tyler still feels his neck, chin and back of the palm tingling; he touches his cheekbone with his fingers, slides down to his neck, stops at the half-healed galling scab from the last Friday, scratches it with his untrimmed nails. Josh Dun says: "I like this logical chain, like you're some kind of an aircraft, and I'm your pilot. Or airport".

Josh Dun says: "There's from one to thirty crashes of aircraft happening daily above America and the neighbouring states, and one out of ten of those are lethal. Even considering that most of those crashes are not covered in media, more than twenty per cent of the American population suffer from aerophobia. In a previous year more than forty-five thousand people have taken "Fly Confidently" courses".

Josh Dun throws another jelly bean into his mouth, Tyler switches to looking at him, looking at the jaw muscles moving as the bean gets squished between those white teeth of his. Tyler scratches-scratches-scratches his neck. Blood pools beneath his nails, stains the blue sheet.

"Itch is the most common psychosomatic disorder. It tends to originate from higher stress levels, depression or anxiety. When psychogenic itch develops, there's usually no signs of it on the skin, but particular parts of one's body start tingling and itching".

Josh Dun Turns his head to Tyler, inspects his neck, his bubblegum-syrupy pink hair lights up the room, and his terrible smell of sagebrush and citruses fills it to the core.

"Psychosomatic itch may also appear when, for example, a person is "allergic" to some other person. Another common reason is guilt. A person is feeling guilty, worries about consequences, is embarrassed of their actions or blames themself. In this case, itch may as well disappear after the atonement or reasoning with oneself. Itch may also be the sign of a severe hate of a person to another human, animal or event, which causes them to experience the strongest negative emotions. Often the skin would boil all over".

Next up is myth busting, kissing here and biting there, painting on the other's skin with bruises. Tyler imagines he's an artist, paints all over the boy's body with uneven strokes of his, this is rather a drawing, not painting in it's usual meaning, the one, that blossoms a couple days later. Josh's back is a big canvas, all covered with Tyler's previous work: yellow, brown, almost green colour. It's much like his day job, he blissfully covers up his own masterpieces, creates new ones. Josh arches his back, his spine cracks, his bones turn to dust. He whispers, catching his trembling breath: "Hematomas can be classified in several different ways. The most dangerous ones are intracerebral traumatic hematoma, acute traumatic cranial subdural hematoma and epidural hematoma. These ones require immediate medical intervention".

Tyler leaves a bite mark on the boy's jawbone, scratches his neck, blood drips all over the pillow, along with lube, water left from the enema; his stomach is twisting from external interference, he looks up and tries to breathe deeply - that's the only way to do it all correctly.

"In most cases acute traumatic cranial subdural hematoma implies the necessity of an immediate surgery, including craniotomy, tomography and hematoma removal. The absolute indication for surgery is a hematoma that is more than half an inch thick according to computed tomography. During the post-surgery period, intensive therapy with the support of vital functions and control of the level of intracranial pressure is necessary - mannitol, ventricular drainage, barbiturates, hyperventilation".

Josh Dun cums into this bubblegum-flavoured condom - it's bright-pink, as though everything around Josh is now of this colour. Josh Dun coughs and rolls over, throwing it onto the floor beside the bed. Josh Dun is a bloody masterpiece of a painting, his neck, back and chest are all covered with colourful spots of underskin paint.

Next up - hot tea and another rubbery meal instead of dinner.

Josh Dun leans onto the counter in Tyler's kitchen, and devours jelly beans out of the crystal bowl, and lets the water crush against the metallic surface of the sink, and puts his fingers under it. Tyler puts the rubbery cellulose meal in its plastic bowl with a cellophane lid into the microwave. Josh Dun, still smelling of grapefruit and sagebrush, holds his fingers under the water string and says: "I didn't particularly like staircases as a child".

Tyler eats his rubbery dinner with a cheap stainless steel spoon that you can find in Target in a seven-piece pack. If there's seven steps in a staircase, the day is most likely to be bad, but not if there's uneven number of them in the others.

The next morning Tyler covers the bubblegum-pink coloured flyer of a missing person with a photo of Josh Dun and a name that spells "Richard Christopher Prenston" on it with an ad for a new company that will clean your carpet for half a price.


End file.
